New Bill Would Make Long-Overdue Changes to Tax Code

With all the damaging bills coming out of Congress today, and promises of more to come, it is easy to lose sight of necessary positive policy changes that Congress should be making to improve the tax code and increase economic growth.

Representatives Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) look to fix that by proposing a series of changes to the tax code that will finally make those long-needed advancements.

1) Eliminate the tax on capital gains. The current tax code taxes capital heavily because of the capital gains tax, taxes on dividends, and through taxes on business income and the corporate income tax–especially because businesses cannot deduct the full cost of the capital they buy but must depreciate it over several years at a lower real value. This reduces the amount of capital in the economy and therefore destroys jobs and lowers wages. As such, taxes on capital should be minimal or nonexistent. Eliminating the capital gains tax completely is a long-overdue step that will reduce the tax burden on capital.

2) Reduce corporate income tax to 12.5 percent. The corporate income tax in the United States is 35 percent. When combined with state taxes, the top rate is the second highest in the world, behind only Japan. The rate is far above the 25 percent average rate of other industrialized countries. The high rate in the United States is a major factor driving jobs to other countries. A reduction in the rate is badly needed to keep jobs in the United States. Reducing the rate to 12.5 percent would be a boon to job creation and American international businesses.

3) Kill the death tax. The death tax is a plague on family-owned businesses and a weight around the economy’s neck. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts actually abolished the death tax for 2010, but if Congress does nothing this year, under law it comes back to life in full force in 2011. Abolishing the death tax would create jobs and help the ailing economy.

4) Immediate Expensing of Business Expenses: As explained above, one of the factors driving up the cost of capital is that businesses cannot deduct the full cost of the capital they buy but must depreciate it over several years. Providing immediate expensing would solve this problem and create jobs and increase wages in the process.

Combined these provisions would reduce tax revenue significantly. In order to partially make up for the lost revenues, the bill would rescind all unspent revenues from the TARP program and the stimulus package. It would also require the Treasury Department to sell all shares and warrants it holds in businesses as a result of the TARP program. These necessary measures would blunt the impact the tax cuts would have on the deficit temporarily. In the long-run, the combined tax cuts would no doubt add considerably to the deficit.

In the current political and budgetary environment, any bill that increases the deficit in future years is likely a non-starter. Nevertheless, the tax cuts proposed in Jordan-Chaffetz bill would be perfect as part of a larger revenue-neutral tax reform effort that made the tax code more efficient.

Curtis S. Dubay, a leading expert on tax reform, income tax, corporate tax, international taxes, and the estate tax, is a research fellow in tax and economic policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read his research.

1. So? A direct comparison is what the author was trying to accomplish. If we're talking about corporate income taxes, that's the item to compare. Granted, there may be x number of other taxes in different countries that make the total tax liability different (or higher) but that's not the author's point. His fact presented is correct. It's not misleading.

2. Huh? Now this is misleading! There are many reasons a company might not pay income taxes. Stating that 66% of companies didn't without any context, is virtually meaningless. If my company had no income, for example, of course I could expect to pay no taxes.

3. If that 25% showed a net loss (no net income), or had large deductions or deferments, etc etc. then it's not a problem, it's the nature of the tax code, and you're actually helping prove part of the author's point that the tax code ought to be simplified. Personally, I'd prefer to have NO corporate income tax at all (and no personal income tax either, perhaps by enacting the Fair Tax) but if we do have one, making the law super-simple "10% of net income, no deductions or exemptions" would be a big start.

1. The fact presented is correct. The conclusion – that this is driving employers abroad – is not supported by that fact, however. Employers don’t have an aversion to paying corporate income tax, they have an aversion to paying tax, however it may be labeled. So if the overall tax burden on an employer is higher in the US than in country X it will push employers towards country X; what the relative corporate tax rates are is not significant.

2. It doesn’t matter *why* those companies didn’t pay the tax in this context. If the tax is discouraging companies from doing business in the US (and as I noted above, that’s not a case that’s been properly made), then it’s only something that’s even potentially affecting one third of companies, as they’re the only ones paying it. Now (theoretically) discouraging even one third of companies is a bad thing, but it’s massively different to (theoretically) discouraging all of them.

3. I absolutely agree – I’m all for simplifying the tax code. But if corporate income tax discourages companies then your plan of “10% of net income, no deductions or exemptions” (which I’d support, give or take a few percent) will *increase* tax on two-thirds of companies, hence making the disincentive worse, not better.

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